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Cen Meats Cater 



AN ADDRESS 



EtnlTears Hater 



1S94 — 1904 




Cen %zat& $attt 

1894=1904 

AN ADDRESS 

given before the 

MIX Slrottulr WitUtm <&ltt& 

April 6, 1904 
Mrs. Adelaide H. Garland 

Founder and President 
of the Society 



FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION 



6 

Ooovrfrht 



CLASS CL XXo. No. j 




ft* 



COPYRIGHTED, I904 
BY MRS. A. H. GARLAND 



Printed by 

(Cfte .^outboatc 



BOSTON 
USA 



Ten Years Later 

jA N ENGLISH writer and journalist 
/^k recently expressed his opinion 
/ - ^ k that a considerable amount of 
JL ^^. Dickens's work, especially in 
pathetic and heroic passages, is artificial and 
pompous, that "the end of David Copperfield 
is a very miserable ending, " calls Agnes 
"unendurable," and Little Nell in the Church- 
yard and the repentance of Dombey "a 
stilted minuet of literature." 
The influence of such writing is misleading 
to a younger generation of readers. 
An English correspondent writing upon the 
subject of this essay describes it as " a class 
of writing that agnostics are made of if the 
writer changes his theme from Dickens to 
theology " and expresses the conviction that 
it is written much in the same way as a 
barrister argues the cause of a guilty client ! 
As far back as 1892 a New England journalist 
writing upon the "Decadence of Dickens" ! 
said : " If some one will not arise and boom 
Mr. Boz we may soon find in volumes of 
extracts and selections, all that the public 
(s) 



TEN YEARS LA TER 



cares to know of Charles Dickens, and Gamp 
and Prig, Swiveller and the Marchioness, 
poor Jo and little Paul, Mr. Pickwick and 
Sam Weller and David Copperfield will appear 
in detached fashion, while Martin Chuzzlewit, 
The Pickwick Papers and The Old Curiosity 
Shop move slowly but surely toward the obli- 
vion that has long since swallowed up Tristram 
Shandy and A Sentimental Journey" etc., etc. 
One of our foremost American writers at the 
same time was also constantly asserting 
with iconoclastic purpose that the mood and 
need of his own time contributed alone to 
Charles Dickens's success. Of the exquisite 
fantasy, The Cricket on the Hearth, into which is 
woven with such delicacy an all-great love in 
its most sacred aspect, he wrote: "I suppose 
something could be falser at all points but I 
do not know how," and of the incidents of the 
tale he said: "all are more exasperatingly 
impossible than anything imaginable outside 
of the Dickens world where they have their 
being, and they are more insufferable because 
they are rooted in certain elemental truths of 
human nature, which they falsify," etc. 
At that time I had been welcoming frequently 
to my home three or four young girls in 
whose mental development I was interested 



TEN YE ARS LATER 



and who pursued under slight guidance, in 
many pleasant hours in my library, a loving 
enthusiastic study of the early English poets, 
with thoroughness, enjoyment, and digestion, 
learning the rich beauty and worth of our 
language from the far-away misty time of 
"renowned Chaucer" down through the cen- 
turies to the singing season of the prince in the 
kingly succession of poets. 
Then came a desire that these young people 
should become aware of the real, true Dickens, 
for whom I had such heart interest and match 
with the love and admiration that I knew the 
reading of his books would arouse, those poor 
and unfair criticisms that were circulating and 
that it was so difficult to be patient under. 
The little circle of students was enlarged and 
that was the beginning of a society that for 
ten years past has been devoted to the honour- 
ing of a great name and to the fascinating 
study of his books. The first incorporated 
Dickens Society so far as known in the world. 
The All Around Dickens Club of new England. 
The avowed purposes of the Society are to 
study the writings of Charles Dickens and to 
create a greater interest in them, and as this 
is inseparable from an affection for the author, 
such incidents of his life, character, person- 



TEN YEARS LA TER 



ality, and friendships as are authenticated 
have always held a proportionate place. 
My own affection and gratitude carries me 
beyond criticism, and I would do him honour 
from a grateful heart. I know that his heart 
was a well of gentleness, kindness, charity and 
purity. The more we learn of the nobility of 
his character and his intense sympathy for his 
fellowmen, the more we recognize the source 
of his creations. 

Early performances that Dickens had only 
contempt for and devoutly wished forgotten, 
like The Village Coquettes, and farces like The 
Strange Gentlemen we would not offend by 
reviving, but the first year of our consocia- 
tion we read together those sketches in which a 
careful reader will readily see the foreshadow- 
ing of later and larger work : Walter Bagehot 
said Dickens described London like a special 
correspondent for posterity and upon our 
memory lies with distinctness his London 
Streets in the Morning, and the deep human 
interest with which the picture of hours in the 
noiseless city before the sunrise, is penned and 
hours after daybreak, the business of the day 
beginning, and the streets at night, with the 
cold, thin rain drizzling down upon the miser- 
able, famishing, fallen creatures of the street, 



TEN YEARS LATER 



" creatures borne down by excess of misery 
and destitution." It is marvellously compas- 
sionate writing for a youthful pen. The little 
home in London Recreations with hyacinth 
glasses in the parlour windows and geranium 
pots in its little court is almost the first of those 
pictures he loved to paint showing humble 
women in quiet domestic lives. I could ask 
no calmer nor more peaceful twilight of my 
life as the years roll " deadening the bright 
hues of early hopes and feelings " than such 
an one as Dickens outlined of the old wife 
of that sketch in her quiet domestic life. 
Thus early he began to create a sympathy for 
the trifling joys of humble daily living. 
In the second year of our association we 
dipped into what Thomas Hood called " the 
goodness of Pickwickedness, " the book under- 
valued by its author, but through which what 
responsibility was aroused 1 What hope ex- 
pressed in poor human nature. 
We had most pleasant journeyings when we 
took the coach from the Golden Cross with Mr. 
Pickwick and his friends and started out into 
that country that is forevermore " the real 
Dickens Land," for which our author cherished 
an enduring love all his life. He took the 
Pickwickians to the spots he loved best, to the 



jo TEN YE ARS LATER 

old minster town of Rochester (and there are 
few spots in the world so pleasant to see), to 
Chatham, " a dream of chalk and drawbridges 
and mastless ships in a muddy stream" but 
full of interest because of its association with 
Dickens's childhood when, to quote Thomas 
Hood again, "he had sky-blue in his cup," to 
Bury St. Edmunds, on the river Lark, and 
explored its Abbey and its lovely old Abbot's 
Bridge, to Ipswich with its fine churches and to 
the Great White Horse Inn on its main thor- 
oughfare, where according to his valet Mr. 
Pickwick " let his judgement go a wisiting," to 
beloved Coventry, to the old sea-port town of 
Bristol with its life and literature and its charm, 
and Bath with its associations with Landor, 
and Birmingham ; all were visited by us in the 
company of Samuel Pickwick and his friends. 
Dr. Johnson said, " a sojourn in a comfortable 
inn is one of the chief pleasures of life " and 
in our readings we became at home in the 
exhilarating comfort of many cheerful hostel- 
ries. In famous inns and secluded inns and en- 
thusiasm reached a climax because the master 
had chronicled them so enchantingly. We 
oughtto be fairly familiar now with the interiors 
of those still standing and those also sacrificed 
to modern ideas. Of all the inns, the birth- 



TEN YEARS LA TER 



place of Pickwick, now demolished, had most 
pathetic interest. There was living interest 
crowded into " the three rooms of Furnival's 
Inn." The historical old Spaniards, threat- 
ened with improvement, is one of the most 
interesting in England ; here once the Kit- 
Cat Club met with a membership of the great- 
est gentlemen in England, Addison and Steele 
and Swift and Dryden, Prior and Congreve, 
but nothing was ever more real there than the 
tea drinking of Mrs. Bardell and her friends 
and the conjugal disputes of Mr. and Mrs. 
Raddle. Dorking is phenomenal for the old 
inns on its steep streets with their second sto- 
ries overhanging the sidewalks. In the inn 
where Mr. Pickwick stopped in Coventry, 
Tennyson paraphrased the legend of Lady 
Godiva. The Leather Bottle " all among the 
cherries, apples, hops" of Kent, where Mr. 
Tupman found consolation is a little story- 
and-a-half plastered house, close on the village 
street. Close on the high street of Rochester 
stands the Bull — " best of inns." We baited 
at every one of the forty and more and, like 
Don Quixote, who always mistook inns for 
castles, thought we had royal entertainment. 
Our parting hours with Mr. Pickwick were 
devoted to contemplating with him in his retire- 



TEN YEARS LATER 



ment, the paintings in the Dulwich Gallery. 
At the conclusion of our readings from the 
Pickwick Papers a creditable examination was 
taken. 

Very early in our history an interest began to be 
shown in our venture that has spread widely 
and never shown abatement to this hour. 
The most precious of the encouraging words 
in those earlier days came from the noble and 
honoured friend, the incomparable woman of 
Dickens's household, "the aunt par excellence" 
who in presenting the names for membership of 
Dickens's sons and daughters in England and 
adding thereto her own, expressed the pride 
that was felt that an organization like ours 
had developed here. The surviving daughter 
of Charles Dickens has expressed a delight 
and a deep interest in this club, that bears her 
father's name, and her words of gratitude and 
pride and friendship for her sister members 
of the Dickens Club have been generously 
expressed. Following each other in quick 
succession came letters of sympathy and 
encouragement from old and valued friends of 
the beloved author ; from Mary Cowden-Clarke 
in Genoa affectionately encouraging an extend- 
ed and enlarged appreciation of Dickens's 
productions ; from great Thackeray's gifted 



TEN YE ARS LATER 13 

daughter, Mrs. Richmond Ritchie ; from the 
loveliest of his adoring friends, Charles Kent, 
of whom Clement Scott said a little time ago, 
"Kent's sweetness of nature is quite unrival- 
led in my study of humanity," and from Sir 
Squire Bancroft, broad in catholicity of feeling. 
Sir Henry Irving is another who wrote that 
the whole scheme of the club seemed to him 
admirable and he shared our admiration and 
affection, and was glad to be numbered among 
students of a genius who had exercised so 
great an influence over three generations. The 
scholarly American whose sympathy with our 
work is perhaps most precious will forgive me 
I am sure if I quote him. Professor Charles 
Eliot Norton said, " It gratifies me to be asso- 
ciated with the memory of Dickens and with 
grateful affectionate thought of him. I honour 
with you the delightful memory of the man 
whose friends stretch in an unbroken chain 
round the world, and who by his writings has 
perhaps given more pleasure and done more 
good than any other writer born in his cen- 
tury and who did more perhaps than any man 
to make the lives of his f ellowmen happier and 
better." At the time of the Queen's Jubilee, 
the Urban Club of London, with which, 
among other celebrities Dr. Johnson was in 



14 TEN YE ARS LATER 

his time associated, celebrating the diamond 
jubilee also of Pickwick, cabled greetings to 
the All Around Dickens Club with mutual love 
for Dickens. 

A whimsical joke of Dickens's was that he 
really was born in Boston ! We have always 
put the day under a rule of continuance. 
Cuming Walters three years ago in his Eng- 
lish Chronicles referring to our celebrations 
said, the veneration and homage shown by our 
society to one who is a very precious English 
possession and one for which the nation has 
cause to be thankful, puts the indifference of 
Englishmen to shame. That reproach is now 
done away with, the infection of our example 
has been contagious and this year as you 
know for the first time has been imitated 
in England. English readers are awakening 
to the potent teachings of his books, their 
special messages, their appeals and their 
rebukes. 

Charles Dickens has always been recognized as 
the promoter of Christmas joy. Christmas was 
his favourite theme. Among his public read- 
ings The Carol was his favourite. It has been 
our selection for many Christmas readings. 
The son of Dickens when he came to us two 
years ago wishing to consider the duty of his 



TEN YE ARS LATER 15 

membership, gave the most interesting recital 
of The Carol we have ever presented, because 
he gave it with a recollection of his father's 
reading : without apparent fatigue and with 
evident enjoyment he recited nearly entire the 
exquisite allegory. There are a few of our 
members who can recall the great necromancer 
and know what truth lies in Jeffrey's words, 
that it was like a return of springtime to look 
into Dickens's eyes ! (The seniors have these 
advantages) and it was with an eagerness 
second to that with which we first looked into 
the fathomless eyes of the master, that we 
waited to hear the son repeat the familiar lines 
with which his father first greeted a Boston 
audience. Other distant members have made 
important contributions to our entertainment 
and also increased our stock of Wemmickian 
possessions with otherwise inaccessible gifts. 
The late Robert Langton sent a paper which 
was an amplification of opinions expressed in 
his book upon " The Childhood and Youth 
of Charles Dickens," and the late Charles Kent 
contributed a specially prepared and reverent 
tribute for one of our anniversaries, a remem- 
brance of a purely personal and private char- 
acter. Two papers from the facile pen of 
Edwin Webster Sanborn in one of which when 



i6 TEN YEARS LATER 

subsequently published in permanent form the 
Dickens Club was complimented by a dedica- 
tion of the booklet. *' East Anglia by Road, 
Rail, and Sea," a historical as well as scholarly 
paper, was contributed by Mr. Cuming Walters 
and more recently a specially prepared article 
for a reading here has been received, treating 
of Charles Dickens as a Social Reformer, 
showing how he impelled action in England by 
creating discontent with wrongs, and inspired 
others to labour for the cure of anomalies 
whose deformities he exposed. It was a clear 
and admirable exposition of Dickens's mental 
attitude towards the pressing social problems 
of his time. Current literature re Dickens 
carefully edited obtained from all-around 
sources is also a portion of our work. The 
tender fancy of What Christmas is as we 
grow older. The Christmas Tree, The Elfin 
Chimes, The hearthstone voices of The Cricket, 
The Vision oj Life, The Runaway Lovers, and 
The Seven Poor Travellers are among our 
Christmas recollections, and I recall, too, a 
reading of The Holiday Romance to a room 
filled with little people, because he was a 
part of it when he was a boy ! 
After Pickwick the selection of the next book 
to study was determined by the choice of the 



TEN YE ARS LATER 17 

majority for David Copperfield. In the tex- 
ture of this book, all the world now knows 
there is a strong fusing of fact with fancy. 
The author drew upon his memories for 
scenes and characters and the deep, sweet 
thoughts in it open a wide door into the 
author's nature. Environment of circum- 
stance, of locality, of friendship, contributed 
to the importance and enjoyment of our study. 
I do not share with many commentators an 
over-confident assignment to actual localities 
of scenes and persons. I am not eager to dig 
out things right or wrong, nor do I refuse to 
accord to the author's creative mind the power 
of mixing realities and fancies, but allow 
that he built his houses as our New England 
romancer said he did, of "materials long 
in use for constructing castles in the air." 
Over the years I have been happy to be able 
to give out some facts which in booksellers' 
phrase are difficult of procuration and will 
add that, to paraphrase Mr. Chester's maxim, 
" We are nothing if we are not accurate ! " 
Ashby-Sterry says, " If you sail by the 
Dickens chart you cannot go very far wrong." 
Dickens joyed in the landmarks of London. 
One of our members, Mr. Laurence Hutton, 
avowing the first love in fiction of the boy he 



i8 TEN YEARS LATER 

was, says all London was a moving panorama 
to him of David Copperfield. The fair 
Canterbury pictures in Copperfield are more 
overlooked by readers than many other 
localities, yet the old monastic city on the 
pleasant Stour is prominent in the story : 
there is more than the dumb splendour of its 
Cathedral and the legends of its martyrs, its 
hills topped with churches and chapels, to 
excite love and worship. In Canterbury we 
came also to the warm welcome of inns. 
Opposite the old Checker Inn where Chaucer 
halted his pilgrims is the Sun Inn with many 
gables and latticed windows where Mr. 
Micawber put up, and where he and Mrs. 
Micawbergave " the beautiful little dinner" to 
David. One of the retired inns in the chief 
town of the Cinque Ports hanging out the sign 
" The cause is altered" Ashby-Sterry imagined 
to be the one where Miss Trotwood had her 
ale ; but the real trespass of donkeys took place 
at Broadstairs. In a little cottage on its sea- 
front Charles Dickens the Younger has pleas- 
antly said in Notes on some Dickens Places and 
People, there lived a charming old lady the 
prototype (in a limited way) of Betsey Trot- 
wood whose cakes and tea, he said, he looked 
back upon with unsatisfied regret. 



TEN YEARS LATER ig 

Next to Kent, Dickens wins our love for the 
county of Suffolk. "The sweet civil country" 
Bishop Hall calls Suffolk and its grassy face 
looks out pleasantly from the Copperfield page. 
When Dickens went down to Yarmouth and 
found it the strangest place in the world, he 
told his after-time biographer that "he should 
try his hand at it." Those who have gone 
down to Yarmouth know the vivid exactness 
with which he framed into the sweet immortal 
story the old fishing port at the mouth of the 
Yare. The enjoyment of our readings was 
enhanced by descriptions of the picturesque 
old place from members who were familiar 
with its narrow streets and wyndes, its attrac- 
tive inns and other landmarks. To touch 
ever so slightly a few of the universally known 
characters of the book, of his treatment of 
little Em'ly, Dickens wrote to M. Cerjat, that 
" he had long been observing that the return 
to virtue of a girl who had fallen had been 
cruelly cut off — long before Copperfield was 
written he had been turning the subject over 
in his mind and he hoped in the way he pre- 
sented the subject to put it to the world in a 
new way and work good " and this I believe 
to be one of the main purposes for which 
Copperfield was written. In this connection 



TEN YEARS LA TER 



I like to repeat a comment of Andrew Lang's 
that "he did not know any other writer who 
had touched the young and absolutely disin- 
terested belief of a little boy in a big boy, 
touched it so kindly and seriously as Dickens. 
The little Davy lost his heart to the big boy 
and set him up in the shrine thereof" — boys 
(and girls too) do it ! Dickens goes no deeper 
down intoanycharacterthanthatof Steerforth. 
The first retrospect of the book is a delicious 
picture of a very young man's mind, and the 
writer anticipated present-day tendencies when 
disparity of years is no bar to a young man's 
choice. A familiar manner that delighted 
Dickens with its whimsical extravagances and 
as he said of another character of his inven- 
tion " was the quality he wanted for the man 
he invented " gave us the one character in 
the book that stands on a pedestal alone. 
What a delight it must have been to the 
inventor to see Mr. Micawber come from his 
creative hand so like his happy original! and 
how sweet a phantom passes in and out of the 
book in the pictures of the adorable child-wife 
in her mingled prettiness and pettishness ! 
The reading of The Tale of Two Cities 
followed Copperfield and its masterly pictures 
were produced with wonderful vividness and 



TEN YEARS LATER 



consistency in treatment of character and 
scenes. From prison shadows until the steps 
die out, they were given with high intellectual 
perception and wonderful interpretation. The 
readings of this club have become the touch- 
stone by which other readings are tested and 
weighed ! In connection with the reading we 
also had many forcible studies. I recall one 
presentation of the aspect of the French 
peasantry in the days that preceded the 
Revolution, and another careful description of 
the suburb of St. Antoine — the old prisons 
of La Force, L' Abbaye and the Conciergerie. 
As a prelude to the reading of Dombey and 
Son, which was our next study, a poetic 
description of Lausanne, where the first 
chapters of Dombey were written, was given 
by a member who had sojourned there the 
previous summer. Of this place and time 
Dickens had written: "I don't believe there 
are many dots on the map of the world where 
we shall have left such affectionate remem- 
brance behind us as in Lausanne." How 
well the many phases of character, the 
masterpieces of portraiture were managed in 
the clever readings ! The spirit and tone 
well caught. When " the last bottle of the old 
Madeira was brought into the sunlight," and 



22 TEN YEARS LATER 

the last notes of the story told, we were able 
to produce the review of the book in 1848 
that gave so much pleasure to the author at 
the time from the pen of a journalist then 
unknown to him, kindly copied for us from 
the files in the British Museum. 
The Dombey people dismissed, we next took 
up the reading of Dickens's most picturesque 
and perhaps most perfect work — the story 
of Great Expectations. The region where 
many of its scenes are laid and which Dickens 
said was a large slice of his life, was copiously 
illustrated with photographs of many places 
produced by one of our number who had 
traversed the East Anglian counties. Fair 
indeed are the graceful, fragrant aisles of 
interlacing vines in the hop gardens of 
Kent, sunny the quiet streets of Rochester 
(Dullborough, Dickens called it), and a present- 
day writer has wittily said : " having produced 
a castle and ruined it and a cathedral and 
restored it, it has ever since rested on its 
laurels! " All things in it are of the past but 
we never weary of the tranquil charms of the 
old town. In Great Expectations Dickens's 
ideal of nobility and dignity of character in 
the humblest is expressed in clearest note, and 
in the intellectual conception of the writer's 



LofC. 



TEN YE ARS LATER 23 

meaning and interpretation of his characters, 
rich with flavour of quaint observation, there 
are few that can vie with the women of this 
society. The discussions, the publication of 
which has been frequently urged, reveal a dis- 
criminating knowledge of literature and abso- 
lute and visible perception of individualities. 
The work is accomplished entirely within the 
club. We have no public entertainers and I 
may add no public entertainments. The 
choice audiences in which as to-day we delight 
are gathered exclusively by invitation. 
We have only just touched the rich edge of 
our next book for study — Bleak House. 
As it was in accord with the motif of our 
work, sketches of men of letters whose friend- 
ship reflected upon the author's life, especially 
those taken into the warmest recesses of his 
affections, have been introduced from time to 
time. Among artists Stanfield, Leech, Maclise, 
Cattermole, Leslie, and the Landseers. Douglas 
Jerrold, Talfourd, Thackeray, and Leigh Hunt 
among authors, and Landor by many years 
his senior, whose picture in Bleak House is so 
lovingly touched. The great Laurifer also, of 
whom Dickens was wont to say, "What a 
great creature he is ! " The great poet and 
the great romancer were allied in their love 



24 TEN YE ARS LATER 

and observation of nature and more closely 
yet in their conception of the unseen life and 
love's survival, but no life was so closely inter- 
woven with his as that of John Forster — 
a man of great ability. Critics and readers 
are still complaining that ego is written large 
through the volumes of his Life of Dickens, 
but it is a clear and definite story and just to 
the great genius of his subject, a true picture 
by his faithfulest friend. 
This society is expansive in its hospitality and 
the friends of members are always welcome. 
English guests whom we have entertained 
have declared their hours with us to have 
been the happiest spent in America. There 
have been special days that stand apart in 
the calendar of the years. Among the most 
pleasurable, a bright and constant remem- 
brance of the sweet maidenly presence in 
these rooms of two who bear the distin- 
guished name. On one occasion we accepted 
the lavish and beautiful hospitality of a dear 
associate who is no longer on earth, at the 
happy Christmas time, and the story described 
by one of our number " of man's selfishness 
and parsimony conquered by untiring efforts 
of good spirits " was related in rooms made 
beautiful with the English holly. 



TEN YE ARS LATER 25 

When Mr. Hughes came to us and for two 
hours poured out a flow of eloquent tribute 
to and understanding of the writer whose 
memory he said he loved more than any one 
since Christ, we felt we had had nothing so 
good since Dickens himself. 
Nearly five years passed before for the first 
time the asterisk with its mystical meaning 
was placed against the name of any one of 
our active members. Our page in memoriam 
shows names distinguished in life by rarest 
endowment of talents; one whose name is 
there put by in remembrance once wrote to 
me, " be proud, be proud of your club, the 
brain man has been there," and so deep was 
her attachment for her club that the weeks 
in which there were no Dickens causeries she 
called "the vacant weeks." There are also 
the names of two who have graced the office 
of Vice-President of this society : one with a 
nature rare, rich, and beautiful in all the 
relations of maiden, daughter, wife, mother, 
and friend; our more recent loss a year ago, 
the brave soul sublimely patient who never 
ceased her kind thoughtfulness for all who 
came under her sweet influence. 
We are not afflicted with what Howard Crosbie 
called the "delirium tremens of club life." 



26 TEN YE ARS LATER 

There is not the tremendous strain upon this 
club of trying to do every good thing under 
the sun, we only aim to do one thing well ! 
Professor Churchill, who gave the high light 
of his sympathy and interest to this club, once 
said to me, " to know one great author 
thoroughly is to open the door into an earthly 
omniscience." 

Familiarized by long acquaintance with every 
characteristic of the ideal persons, the magni- 
ficent multitude of the writer's imagination, 
they are yet, I am free to say, ever fresh, ever 
attractive to us all. Upon the grand religious 
spirit of his work, his reverence for sacred 
things, I have always dwelt. Thackeray and 
Dickens have been compared as the physician 
and surgeon respectively of human nature. 
I like very much to repeat what the Rev. A. N. 
Blatchford of Bristol, England, said recently, 
of the dealing with evil by the two writers, 
Thackeray, he sa)'s, " puts the knife in fear- 
lessly, but Dickens in his sympathetic handling 
gets his healing plaister ready for the scar and 
sends humanity on its way strengthened. 
Squalor and misery he treated with hope." 

" Our Euripides the human 

With his droppings of warm tears 
And his touches of things common 
Till they rose to touch the spheres ! " 



TEN YE A RS LATER 27 

There can hardly be a "decadence of Dickens" 
when for many years the sales of one publish- 
ing house have averaged 250,000 copies of 
his works ; they are translated into every 
European language. Thousands of copies it is 
said are sold every year in Amsterdam and 
other Dutch cities. Every librarian in the 
English reading world can testify that he has 
been in the past few years to the fore more 
than any author living or dead; his fame is 
inextinguishable despite those writers who 
wonder at " the curiously persistent worship 
of Dickens" and can see him only in a "dim 
perspective." 

In the beginning I raised a high standard for 
my club. I am proud to-day that we have 
kept to it. There come to me constantly 
cordial wishes for a beautiful success from 
many parts where Dickens is read and loved, 
and in the club a most generous spirit of 
co-operation prevails. To our club motto 
then, " Stand by," in its broadest translation, 
there is no need for reference. 
With a mind filled with grateful tenderness and 
many grateful remembrances I hope to enter 
with you, my associates, upon another decade 
of work. May success attend our Club. 

ADELAIDE H. GARLAND 



TEN YE A RS LATE R 29 

ON the last birthday anniversary of Charles 
Dickens, which was celebrated by the 
All Around Dickens Club, an editor of a 
Boston newspaper referred to the scene on the 
New York docks, viewed for the first time by 
Martin Chuzzlewit and Mark Tapley, and quoted 
from Dickens's description of the spectacle which 
has proved to be a prophetic representation of 
"Yellow Journalism" of our own generation. In 
the course of our club readings in the past months, 
we have also found Dickens a seer for the counter- 
parts of organizations like "The Sisterhood of Medi- 
aeval Marys," " Women of England," " Daughters 
of Britain," "Sisters of all the Cardinal Virtues sep- 
arately," " Females of America " and Ladies of a 
hundred denominations exist to-day, and Mrs. 
Pardiggle's prototype is not an impossibility — 
the indefatigable woman, who during the revolving 
duties of a day figured as a school lady, a visiting 
lady, a reading lady, a distributing lady, and 
claimed that the exercise did her good. Not 
many weeks before his death Charles Dickens 
acknowledged a toast to literature, and did so on 
behalf of the sisterhood as well as the brotherhood 
of literature and most happily prophesied of the 
time when he might see the better half of human 
nature sitting in the President's chair. Had he 
lived until the present day, he could have felt 
only satisfaction and pride in seeing the "Chair" 
of the All Around Dickens Club occupied by the 
lady who founded this society ten years ago and 
who has laboured unceasingly to perpetuate his 
memory and keep it green. As one who has been 



jo TEN YE ARS LATER 

closely associated with her in the executive work 
and an observer of the unanimity existing be- 
tween her and all of the members, I feel that 
our present success results from this accord, for all 
have stood by for the good of the club, fully realiz- 
ing that thwarted harmony would be disastrous to 
its advancement. We have worked also for the 
love of our work, deriving enthusiasm from our 
President's untiring devotion and, like the boys at 
Dr. Strong's school, " We all felt that we had a 
part in the management and in sustaining its 
character and dignity, hence we soon became 
warmly attached to it." On the behalf of every 
member of our club I wish our beloved President, 
who is the right woman in the right place, the 
greatest success in the future and will only add the 
familiar words spoken at another anniversary: 
" Here's to her. There never was another woman 
like her." 

LYDIA PARSONS, Secretary, 
All Around Dickens Club. 



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